Where we stand (and will sit, actually!)

The man who is building the room that will be our new half bath came over yesterday morning and put in the section of wall on which the new toilet will (appear to) hang, and on which the sink and the cabinet that holds it actually will hang. Here's the result. Now it just needs to be painted — along with the rest of the walls, inside and out.

The sink cabinet is not blue. That's just the peel-off plastic film that protects the door surface from scratches during installation. The actual surface is actually shiny white melamine. The room looks spacious in this photo

Let me step back in time and in distance. Here's the room before that back panel was put in yesterday. The toilet hangs on the blue frame that is bolted to the floor and back wall. The toilet tank is what you see inside the big square at the top of the blue frame. The sink and cabinet will hang on the wooden supports on the left, which will be behind the wall panel. We have a piece of furniture that we'll put in the room on the right side of the door. It's a storage cabinet that my father built for me in the 1950s.

Here's another view from a little farther back. We're going to have a new window put in on the right side. Right now it's a French window with panels that open into the room. It's really not practical in this location, and it's pretty old. In its place, we'll have a sliding window put in. We have a chest of drawers that we'll put under the window, and we'll be able to set the electric fan on top of it for the summer, when we leave the window open at night. A potted plant or two might be happy there too.

 

And here's another step back. We have a second chest of drawers to put along the exterior wall of the new loo next to the radiator. I can't wait for this all to be finished.

Meanwhile, we're supposed to have daytime temperatures well up into the 90s in ºF this week. Some weather services are predicting highs of 100ºF (39ºC). It's going to be miserable for the contractors to have to work in such heat, and for us sleeping will be miserable too.

Quinze fleurs

This time of year, when the hours of daylight are so long, it's a lot easier for me to take photos on my early morning and early evening walks with Tasha. When it's not raining or threatening to rain, I take my camera with me. I took this set of 15 flower photos almost a week ago. Some of the flowers are in our yard, some in neighbors' yards, and some out on the edges of the Renaudière vineyard. You'll notice that we've had a major "bloom" of little black beetles over the past week or two.

The new bathroom upstairs is getting close to being finished. The contractors who are building out the room is coming back today to try to get the work done to the point where the plumber can actually install the WC and the sink. Both are wall-hung units, so the wall needs to be finished and painted before they go up. Walt posted photos yesterday, and I'll try to take some today and post them tomorrow.

Choses vues chez la voisine...

We have a part-time neighbor who hasn't come to stay in the hamlet in a while now. She lives in the Paris area, and she has inherited her late husband's family home here. She hires a man to keep the yard mowed and her rose bushes in good shape. Here are some things I've seen on her property recently.

In a fairly big windstorm last week, one of her trees fell down. Or at least half of it did. It's a willow. I wonder if she even knows about it. A neighbor who lives here full-time, as we do, told me yesterday he had gone to look at the big limb on the ground. He said the trunk of the willow tree seemed to be rotting from inside out. It couldn't stand up to the strong winds. I've seen at least two other big limbs broken off trees out around the edges of the vineyard.

With recent rains, the pond out behind the part-time neighbor's house has a good amount of water in it now. Sometimes it goes completely dry. In olden times, before there were so many people living on the land and sewage mains were put in, these ponds, called fosses, were used for waste water and sewage disposal. They are holes that were dug to contain that waste, along with rainwater. Now they just collect rainwater.

The other day, as I walked by with Tasha, I startled a big heron that was standing in the fosse. Now I know why. It was hunting frogs that have invaded the little pond. Not far away, there's a larger pond, called a mare, which is out behind our house, and it is full of frogs right now. They croak and chirp in a loud chorus on warm mornings. I guess some of them have crossed the dirt road and colonized the fosse. Maybe they make the land crossing when the weather is rainy.

Le Mont St-Michel en 15 images

I don't think the Mont St-Michel needs any introduction. Here is a slideshow containing 15 photos that I took there in June 2006. It lasts less than two minutes and will "loop" endlessly if you let it. You can pause it using YouTube controls if you want to examine a particular image. Indluded are views both of and from the Mont, which is an island at high tide and surrounded by mud flats, marshes, and "salty meadows at low time. Normandy cows as well as sheep graze nearby, and the bay north of the Mont is famous for the mussels farmed there.



I've been lucky to go the Mont Saint-Michel many times over the decades, including several trips since we moved to Saint-Aignan in 2003. Here are some of my older blog posts about the Mont. See also this Normandy tourism site about it.


P.S. The work up in the loft space continues. Progress is being made, but we've got a way to go yet. I didn't really have a chance to take any photos yesterday. Everything seems really chaotic at certain moments, but I'm sure it's going to be great when it's done. À suivre...